SARAJEVO — Bosnians voted Sunday in a general election that will choose the first government to run the country without international supervision since the end of the 1992-95 war.

The office of the international administrator in Bosnia, which has wielded enormous influence in government affairs under the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord, is scheduled to close in mid-2007.

But the political jostling ahead of the elections did little to allay concerns over the Balkan state's future, with nationalist parties highlighting ethnic divisions rather than focusing on economic reform and membership in the European Union.

The first preliminary results for the tripartite presidency were expected early Monday.

Apart from choosing a president, 2.7 million voters were also electing the central Parliament and the assemblies of Bosnia's two semi-independent entities: the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

A vote in October 2002 was won by Croat, Muslim and Serb nationalists who led Bosnia throughout the traumatic interethnic war, which claimed 200,000 lives.

The top international representative in Bosnia, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, said at a polling station that he expected the newly elected leaders to "come back to serious work."

But many Bosnians were more pessimistic, especially younger voters, some of whom saw little point in casting their ballots.

"For whom to vote to have a better life? There is no one," said Sanela, a 23- year-old saleswoman from Sarajevo. "Young people can expect to have a better life only with what they create on their own. We cannot expect anything from politicians."

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Bosnia is hoping to sign an association agreement with the European Union, seen as the first step on the long path toward membership of the 25-nation bloc, by the end of the year.

Opinion polls showed that in Republika Srpska, the premier, Milorad Dodik, could defeat the nationalist Serb Democratic Party for the first time since the outbreak of the war.

Encouraged by Montenegro's vote to split from Serbia in May, Dodik is calling for an independence referendum in Republika Srpska - a move for which there is currently no legal ground.

In Bosnia's Muslim-Croat half, the polls showed three parties - the opposition Social Democrats, the centrist Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Muslim nationalist Party of Democratic Action - almost neck-and-neck.